Host Sarika Mehta interviews Marivi Soliven about her new novel "The Mango Bride."

"The Mango Bride" is the story of two immigrant Filipinas in California. Banished by her wealthy Filipino family in Manila, Amparo Guerrero travels to Oakland, California, to forge a new life. Although her mother labels her life in exile a diminished one, Amparo believes her struggles are a small price to pay for freedom…

Like Amparo, Beverly Obejas – an impoverished Filipina waitress – forsakes Manila and comes to Oakland as a mail order bride in search of a better life. Yet even in the land of plenty, Beverly fails to find the happiness and prosperity she envisioned.

Jane lived happily with her father until his failed suicide attempt and relocation to a mental hospital forced her into the foster care system. By chance, Jane is assigned to foster parents involved in the Second Day Believers—a cult focused on the “cleansing” of mental impurities in their children, and the sanctity of the internal organs of farm animals. Jane is quickly initiated into the cult but her father’s lingering voice prevents her from becoming entirely indoctrinated. Despite Jane’s resistance, she is revered in the cult as the second coming of the late wife of the leader of the Second Day Believers.

Host Sarika Mehta interviews best-selling author Jean Kwok, who is best known for her novel Girl in Translation. Jean Kwok visited Portland in April as part of PCC Reads 2012-2013: Girl in Translation.

Jean Kwok immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She won early admission to Harvard, where she worked as many as four jobs at a time, and graduated with honors in English and American literature, before going on to earn an MFA in fiction at Columbia.

They live among us. They are your neighbor, your mother, your lover. They change.

Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realizes just how different she is. Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and hours later stepped off it, the only passenger left alive, a hero. President Chase Williams has sworn to protect the people of the United States from the menace in their midst, but is becoming the very thing he has promised to destroy. So far the threat has been controlled by laws and violence and drugs.

Between the Covers welcomes Ellen Sussman, author of the new novel, The Paradise Guest House.

It starts as a trip to paradise. Sent on assignment to Bali, Jamie, an American adventure guide, is caught in Bali’s infamous nightclub bombings. One year later, haunted by memories, Jamie returns to Bali seeking a sense of closure. Most of all, she hopes to find Gabe, the man who helped save her.

The novel explores "what happens when the troubles of the world descend on paradise" and how humans must make peace with the realization that, "There is no paradise. There is no safety."

Host Jennifer Kemp interviews Ali Liebgott about her new novel, "Cha-Ching!" The story revolves around Theo, a scruffy, big-hearted and quick-witted heroine, who has been delivered luckless into a culture where the winners and losers have already been decided. Her adventures in getting over take her from SF to NYC, from dyke bars to telemarketing outfits, casinos to free clinics. Liebegott tells a story of what it means to be young and broke in America.

Karen Russell is one of today’s most celebrated and vital writers—honored in TheNew Yorker’s list of the twenty best writers under the age of forty, Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists, and the National Book Foundation’s five best writers under the age of thirty-five. Last year, Karen Russell was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (alongwith David Foster Wallace and Denis Johnson) for her debut novel, Swamplandia!

In the hip haven of Portland, Oregon, a pack of unsteady but loyal friends asks what it means to bring babies into an already crowded world. A smart, edgy and poignantly funny exploration of the complexities of what parenthood means today, Monica Drake's second novel, The Stud Book, demonstrates that when it comes to babies, we can learn a lot by considering our place in the animal kingdom. Cheryl Strayed calls The Stud Book a "take your breath away good, blow your mind wise, crack your heart open beauty of a novel. A smart sexy, comic compassionate, absorbing and necessary story of our times."

Peter Rock, novelist and professor at Reed College, discusses his latest book, "The Shelter Cycle," which dramatizes the experience of a small group of children as they and their families prepare for the end of the world in Montana in 1990. It also focuses on the complicated and surprising interactions of these same individuals, twenty years later, as they try to integrate the lessons of their past with a much different world. This novel does not sensationalize or parody, but attempts to humanize and understand, to follow what seems an extreme collection of beliefs to where they make sense.

Peter Rock is also the author of My Abandonment (2009) The Unsettling (2006) The Bewildered (2005) The Ambidextrist (2002) Carnival Wolves (1998) and This Is the Place (1997).

Audio

Host Ed Goldberg speaks with writer Alistair Burke about her third white-knuckle thriller "212." NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and her partner, J.J. Rogan are investigating the murder of NYU student Megan Gunther, who's the target of threatening posts on a college gossip Web site. The death of bodyguard Robert Robo Mancini, whose bullet-ridden corpse turns up in a swanky new building, the 212, built by Sam Sparks, the high-powered Manhattan real-estate developer Robo worked for, ups the ante. When Sam makes it clear that the police won't have access to any company records, Ellie's interest is piqued. As she and J.J. try to piece together Megan's life, they discover a link between the student and a recently murdered real estate agent. With her usual tenacity, Ellie pursues leads that put both her career and her life at risk. Burke expertly weaves real-life headlines into her plot—particularly the Craig's List Killer and the slew of recent political scandals—without ever sacrificing originality.

Sarah Dunant is the author of the international bestseller The Birth of Venus, which has received major worldwide acclaim and In the Company of the Courtesan. With the publication of Sacred Hearts, she rounds out a Renaissance trilogy bringing voice to the lives of three different women in three different historical contexts. Sarah Dunant’s research has resulted in vivid reconstructions of womens’secret histories in the characters of a Florentine Noblewoman, a Venetian Courtesan and with Sacred Hearts the lives of the Sisters of Santa Caterina.

Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with Susan Douglas about her new book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work Is Done. Douglas exposes popular images of women in the media as mere fantasies of female power, assuring women and girls that the battle for equality has been won, so there’s nothing wrong with resurrecting sexist stereotypes—all in good fun, of course. She shows that these portrayals not only distract us from the real-world challenges facing women today but also drive a wedge between baby-boom women and their “millennial” daughters.

Susan J. Douglas is the author of Where the Girls Are, The Mommy Myth, and other works of cultural history and criticism. She is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies and chair of the department at the University of Michigan, where she has taught since 1996. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, Ms., The Village Voice, and In These Times. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Host Marianne Barisonek interviews Susan Stoner, author of Timber Beasts. Stoner , general counsel at Portland-headquartered Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 — worked in her free time to develop a series of historical mysteries set in the Portland of 1902. Now the first published installment is in print, and is garnering favorable reactions from local historians and labor history buffs.Jim Strassmeier, longtime oral historian for the Oregon Historical Society, called it a “unique, genre-crossing novel” that “combines rousing adventure with accurate back-to-the-past details.”

Host Ed Goldberg speaks with Dana Stabenow, author of A Night Too Dark, a mystery set in the Bush Country of Alaska. Stabenow has produced works in the science fiction, mystery, and suspense/thriller genres. Many of her books are set in her home state of Alaska, where she was raised by her single mother who lived and worked on a fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska.

On the March 25, 2010, airing of Between the Covers, host Crystal Leighty interviews Chris Bohjalian, the author of thirteen books, including the new novel, Secrets of Eden, a story of shattered faith, intimate secrets and the delicate exploration of the nature of sacrifice.

Host Ed Goldberg interviews Audrey Niffenegger, author of Her Fearful Symmetry, a ghost story involving two sets of twins.

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and a guide at Highgate Cemetery. In addition to her bestselling debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, she is the author of two illustrated novels. She lives in Chicago.

Host Ed Goldberg speaks with Annie Barrows, co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, a novel of love and intrigue on an island in the English Channel in 1946.

Mary Ann Shaffer became interested in Guernsey while visiting London in 1976. On a whim, she decided to fly to Guernsey but became stranded there when a thick fog descended and all boats and planes were forbidden to leave the island. As she waited for the fog to lift, warming herself by the heat of the hand-dryer in the men's restroom, she read all the books in the Guernsey airport bookstore, including Jersey under the Jack-Boot. Thus began her fascination with the German Occupation of the Channel Islands.

Many years later, when goaded by her book club to write a novel, Mary Ann naturally thought of Guernsey. She chose to write in the epistolary form because, "for some bizarre reason, I thought it would be easier." Several years of work yielded The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which was greeted with avid enthusiasm, first by her family, then by her writing group, and finally by publishers around the world. Sadly, Mary Ann's health began to decline shortly thereafter, and she asked her niece, Annie Barrows, to help her finish the book.

Mary Ann Shaffer was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in 1934. Her career included libraries, bookstores, and publishing, but her life-long dream was to "write a book that someone would like enough to publish." Though she did not live to see it, this dream has been realized in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Annie Barrows, whose career also included libraries, bookstores, and publishing, is the author of the

Elizabeth Benedict is the author of five novels, including the bestseller Almost and the National Book Award-shortlisted Slow Dancing, and The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. She has been a frequent guest on such national programs as NPR’s Fresh Air and All Things Considered, and her work has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Boston Globe, AARP, Huffington Post, Allure, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, and Salmagundi. Benedict is currently on the faculty of the Columbia University MFA program and has taught writing at Princeton, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Swarthmore College. She lives in New York City and Boston.

Host Ed Goldberg interviews local writer Matthew Flaming, author of The Kingdom of Ohio, a speculative about science in 1900. "The Kingdom of Ohio" is a love story set against New York City at the dawn of the mechanical age, featuring Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and J. P. Morgan." After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is Peter Force, a young frontier adventurer who comes to New York City in 1901 and quickly lands a job digging the first subway tunnels beneath the metropolis. The woman is Cheri- Anne Toledo, a beautiful mathematical prodigy whose memories appear to come from another world. They meet seemingly by chance, and initially Peter dismisses her as crazy. But as they are drawn into a tangle of overlapping intrigues, Peter must reexamine Cheri-Anne’s fantastic story. Could it be that she is telling the truth and that she has stumbled onto the most dangerous secret imaginable: the key to traveling through time? Set against the mazelike streets of New York at the dawn of the mechanical age, Peter and Cheri-Anne find themselves wrestling with the nature of history, technology, and the unfolding of time itself.

Comments

I've read the book twice and rather hoped to hear the program that the author spoke on the book. But that page was not available on your site. Anyway, I loved the book. I thought it was an exciting dose of history. Stoner brought the Portland of 1900 to life. There was intrigue that kept my interest throughout the book.